Visiting Writers Series Continues in March with José Olivarez and Tommy Orange

Kalamazoo Valley's "About Writing" Visiting Writers series is coordinated by English instructor Dr. Julie Stotz-Ghosh and offers students the opportunity to talk with professional writers and listen to their work. Retired English instructor Rob Haight established the series and began bringing noteworthy authors to the college in 2001. The visits are free and open to the public and always include a craft talk and a reading.

Upcoming Visits:
Tuesday, March 17, 2020, José Olivarez: poetry. Craft talk at 10 a.m. and reading at 2:15 p.m. in the Student Commons Theater, Room 4240, Texas Township Campus.

José Olivarez is the son of Mexican immigrants. His debut book of poems, Citizen Illegal, was a finalist for the PEN/ Jean Stein Award and a winner of the 2018 Chicago Review of Books Poetry Prize. It was named a top book of 2018 by NPR and the New York Public Library. Along with Felicia Chavez and Willie Perdomo, he is co-editing the forthcoming anthology, The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNEXT. He is the co-host of the poetry podcast, The Poetry Gods and a recipient of fellowships from CantoMundo, Poets House, the Bronx Council on the Arts, the Poetry Foundation, & the Conversation Literary Festival.

In 2019, he was awarded a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation. His work has been featured in The New York Times, The Paris Review, and elsewhere. In 2018, he was awarded the first Author and Artist in Justice Award from the Phillips Brooks House Association and named a Debut Poet of 2018 by Poets & Writers.

Olivarez is a master teaching artist. As part of his #GenteficationWorldTour, he visited 20 different states in the fall of 2018 in support of his debut book, Citizen Illegal. He has taught poetry workshops and performed at community organizations, high schools, book fairs, and universities all over the country.

Thursday, March 26, 2020, Tommy Orange: fiction. Craft talk at 10 a.m. and reading at 2:15 p.m. in the Student Commons Theater, Room 4240, Texas Township Campus.

Tommy Orange is the author of the New York Times bestselling novel There There, a multi-generational, relentlessly paced story about a side of America few of us have ever seen: the lives of urban Native Americans. There There was one of The New York Times Book Review’s 10 Best Books of the Year, and won the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Orange is a recent graduate from the MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts. He is a 2014 MacDowell Fellow, and a 2016 Writing by Writers Fellow. He is an enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma. He was born and raised in Oakland, California, and currently lives in Angels Camp, California.

There There is the Common Read selection for the 2019/20 academic year at Kalamazoo Valley.

For more details about the Visiting Writers series, go to https://www.kvcc.edu/campuslife/visitingwriters/.